Andrew Symonds has revealed his pain at the breakdown of his
friendship with former Australian teammate Michael Clarke.

Clarke first lifted the lid on the feud that split the pair
apart in his autobiography, detailing their falling out when
Symonds was sent home from a one-day series against Bangladesh in
Darwin in 2008 after going fishing instead of attending a team
meeting.

"Some former teammates will take his side, and feed his
conviction that I let him down and put ambition ahead of mateship,"
Clarke wrote in My Story.

"I would say that he let me down too – that if he had understood
mateship as a two-way street, he would have seen that I had to do
what was right for the whole team."

But, according to Symonds, his resentment towards Clarke
stretches back further to an incident where the all-rounder threw a
drink on him.

While Clarke referenced the event in his autobiography, Symonds
never told his side of the story. Until now.

“I threw a drink on him. He didn’t tell me to go to bed, he said
something else but I threw a drink on him and what he said to me
put me into a rage,” Symonds said on Fox Sports' Cricket
Legends earlier this month.

“What he said to me was nowhere near accurate and that immediate
point is where he lost me and I lost him.

“Our friendship was destroyed in that moment.

“He’d said to me, not in these words, but he’d suggested I was a
selfish player and a selfish person. The one thing I don’t consider
myself to be is that and that really annoyed me.”

Symonds accepted his role in the bitter dispute and admitted
things went sour over time.

“When he (Clarke) first came into the side I took him up north
and went fishing and chasing pigs and riding motorbikes and all
these sorts of things to give him an experience which he’d never
had and he really enjoyed it,” Symonds said.

“I enjoyed taking him and seeing him in that environment was at
times very humorous. We had a lot of fun.

“It’s something that probably happened over time, we grew apart
for a number of reasons.

“We grew apart for the wrong reasons and I’ll accept
responsibility for the most part of that. Some of the things I did
were probably out of line.

“Then things broke down for whatever reason, it’s just the way
it ended up.”

Clarke described the breakdown as one of the hardest things he
has ever had to deal with.

"Ever since Warney's retirement in 2007, Symmo has been my best
friend in the Australian team and my favourite cricketer to play
with," Clarke wrote.

"After he is sent home from Darwin, I try to catch up with him
and make amends and rebuild the friendship. I continue this effort
on and off for years and we play together again, but it's never the
same.

"When I become captain, I will be determined to do things a
better way. It will cost me other friendships. None will leave as
much pain as the one I lost with Andrew Symonds."